The brothers were almost of an age. They had been bound together from infancy by ties of the closest affection. It is vain to hope that any words of ours can succeed in conveying to our readers the poignancy of the trial to which Mar Shimun now found himself subjected. But his choice was the choice of Guzman the Good. "My people are in my charge, and they are many," he answered; "how can I betray them for the sake of one, though that one be my brother?" And, on the receipt of this answer, Hormizd was put to death. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO AMADIA. No. 16] Mar Shimun had made two attempts to obtain further succour from the Russians during the five or six weeks' respite which succeeded the first attacks. And on the second occasion some reinforcement appears to have been sent, but it is not quite known at what period, while it is certain that it never arrived. For some years previous to the war common rumour had persistently credited the Russians with having secretly sapped the allegiance of many prominent chiefs among the Kurds; and as soon as war broke out it had been confidently expected that these men would turn against Turkey. How far this rumour was justified is perhaps known positively to no one; but it is certain that, while hopes of plunder and butchery lasted, the Kurds all sided with the Turks. Perhaps the Russians may have had some cause to think that the more prosperous aspect of their affairs in Asia Minor might now be prompting these double traitors to think better of their first bargain. Anyway a party of some 400 Cossacks was about this time pushed up from Urmi into Oramar. Sutu Agha received them most graciously, and sent two of his own sons with them to guide them on their further journey. But secretly he betrayed them into an ambush which he had prepared with the assistance of the Kurds of Shemsdinan, and in the deep Balanda gorge they were exterminated to the last man. The second assault on the Assyrians was delivered in the middle of August; and this time the assailants had the formidable assistance of the Kurds of Barzan, who lay to the south of Tkhuma, and formed the connecting link between the co-ordinated assaults from Oramar on the east and from Berwar on the west. Our friend Sheikh Abdul Selim[159] was unhappily no longer their leader. The Government had always looked with a jealous eye on the tolerant "Sheikh of the Christians," and a few months earlier he had been enticed down to Mosul by the Vali Haidar Beg, and there secretly put to death.